Throughout the fall term, Dartmouth women's lacrosse players will be
sending in updates from their travels around the globe. Team members
are currently studying, interning and volunteering abroad in a
variety of countries thanks to the flexibility provided by the
College's four-quarter Dartmouth-Plan system. Each student-athlete will provide at least one blog entry about her experiences.

The weekend following the Cape Point trip, I was able to convince Parks and Goldberg to join me on an overnight hiking trip to the Cederberg Wilderness Reserve, which is about 3 hours North of Cape Town. Little did we know that we were about to embark on a very hard couple days of hiking.

On the way there, we passed through a lot of vineyards and farms before reaching the rock covered mountain ranges that Cederberg is famous for. We were all very happy to finally arrive at our camp-site after some pretty scary driving on dirt roads that definitely would not have passed US safety regulations. However, the views that we had on the way there were totally worth the life-threatening experience. I was literally glued to my window the entire time.

As we began climbing up the first mountain, our excitement quickly changed over to shock as we struggled to keep up with our maniac guide who was practically running up the mountain, a very steep mountain at that. As we neared the top, he informed us that we would be doing some rock scrambling, which entails a mild form of rock climbing. To all of our surprise, Parks was an incredibly talented rock scrambler.

Back at the camp after a tiring day of hiking and a delicious dinner, the group we were with decided to play a game of 30 Seconds, a South African version of Taboo. Obviously, Parks, Goldberg and I were on a team together, got way more competitive than any one else we were playing with, and ended up winning the game. It was pretty funny.

The next morning, we set out on our second hike, which wasn’t quite as difficult, but ended up still being pretty hard because we were all sore from the day before. All during the hike we saw some awesome rock formations, the most famous being the Maltese Cross. It was huge!

After the hike, we went to a small swimming hole with a bunch of rocks that you could jump off of into the water. Although I did muster up enough courage to jump off one of rocks, Goldberg was by far and away the bravest of us all and jumped off the tallest rock into the freezing cold water. Parks and I were very proud.

Looking back, even though we were all exhausted on Monday morning as we got up for work, our Cederberg adventure was definitely worth it. And now we are all experienced rock scramblers! Especially Parks.

Well, so long from South Africa, I hope you enjoyed hearing about some of the cool things Parks, Goldberg and I have been up to so far on our term abroad!